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Ask Slashdot: Whatever Happened To the 'Year of Linux on Desktop'?
An anonymous reader writes: Investors, enthusiasts, and Linux distro makers have for more than a decade projected that the upcoming year will be the year of Linux on the desktop platform. But we just can't seem to get to that year for some reason. Windows continues to dominate the consumer market. Apple's macOS X is quickly gaining ground among business customers and designers, and is already ahead of Linux. Do you see Linux getting a significant boost in the desktop market in the coming years?
What happened was, we'd already been using it for years so it sounded really stupid and it was only ever a joke where people laughed at anybody who had repeated the phrase.
It was already a great desktop, and it still is.
New users are not really useful to us, either. Please don't switch.
No.
From 2016, 2015, 2014 . . .
Posted from my iPhone
I don't see Linux gaining a significant part of the desktop market in the foreseeable future. And, as an avid Linux user, I think that's a great thing.
I don't want Linux to get so popular. Getting that popular brings two really terrible things with it: more attention from hackers, and a more rapid degradation of the operating system as it tries harder to cater to everybody.
The desktop was replaced with the smartphone and considering that every android phone runs on a linux kernel its fair to say that Linux rules the world
What about ChromeOS - Isn't it Linux?
OSX is based on BSD, does that count?
There are so many to choose from.
For Windows you get 1 company supported product.
For MacOS you get 1 company supported product.
For Linux you have many 100's of 'You do this your self' products.
Linux is way too hard to use for most grandmothers. Update what? How? Why does it not run any more? What are these conflicts? What is a 'apt-get' anyway? Nope you need to use yum. Or some other thing.
When there is A (singular) company that sells and supports A (singular) Linux, and makes it so easy to use that any (ANY) grandmother can use it, then (maybe) there will be Linux on some desktops. Until that time, Only geeks need apply.
The App appers killed it.
Seriously. The issue with desktop systems is they need to be responsive in ways which violate The Unix Philosophy or are bogged down by adhering to it. The only major attempt to address this has been Systemd, which is itself so bogged down with developer pissing contests, poor architectural choices and (likely intentional) security holes that it just didn't take off. Add in the issue of DRM providers (cough. Widevine cough) which stops most of the content from making it there for platforms like FreeBSD and you end up with a shit user experience.
...will be the year of Linux on the desktop. W8 4 it!
Hehehehe... For some reason indeed... Such as SUCKING?
.
So it you phrase the statement a little differently, from "Year of Linux on Desktop" to Year of Linux for Personal Computing," that year is in the past due to smartphones becoming the main personal computing device for many. Not only is it in the past, but it is continuing to recur each year..
An artificial goal designed to hide the fact that Linux is successful on servers, embedded systems, mobile devices, as well as niche markets like supercomputing? You might as well try to hype the "year of carpooling by using an app".
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Canonical blew the only chance with Unity.
When was YOUR year of the Linux desktop?
Mine was 1998. I installed Redhat 5.2 and Linux has been on my desktop ever since.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
In case you missed it, it's called Un*x on the Desktop and it's everywhere.. MacOS bunded a BSD kernel and the community started ported opensource to it. Microsoft now has a ubuntu lite Bash Shell for Windows. Un*x became a commodity.
I made this: http://www.bpftpserver.com
I use Linux as desktop at home, and at work. I get really grumpy if I have to use Windows.
Moved my totally non technical mother to Linux a few years back. Smartest move I ever made, support calls after the first two weeks fell off to nothing. She loves it., Never crashes, much faster, not waiting for endless updates.
(Linux Mint Cinnamon, less of a learning curve than Win 10)
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
This sort of sudden change won't happen, these things take time, the "year of the Linux desktop" wouldn't have happened even if we where all using Linux by now. More to the point I haven seen any Linux users talk about this seriously for years myself, only people who want to mock Linux.
Those are sort of on the desktop. Granted given that the general trend is people are using mobile devices more often than not, and your choices are a Linux kernel or Mach, we've already been there a while.
Visceral infighting killed any positive effort for expanding the ecosystem. For an example, join a forum and ask for help. Bonus points if you have a positive opinion of systemd or pulse.
And this time, WE MEAN IT!
Windows & MAC now automagically update behind the scenes and mostly work.
Dist upgrades still require a stupid amount of geek knowledge, looking at config files, depreciating packages often, and requiring manual config file changes. Add systemd nonsense to the mix, and even old *nix people get fed up with things like ifconfig no longer working... I can go on and on.
It won't happen because the people involved don't try to make it idiot proof, which may be fine for half of the /. readers, but pretty much the rest of the world says wtf?
My ideal Linux desktop is a Windows laptop that has several Cgywin windows open to ssh into my file server (FreeBSD) and Red Hat Linux box.
Turns out the bazaar is a shitty way to do software development. Woops!
There is no incentive for the majority of end-users to use Linux. Few people bother with desktops to start with and the ones that do usually buy a pre-built which comes with windows installed. Windows is prettier, already installed, and has significantly fewer driver issues. Linux wins in smartphones and servers but end-users don't care about a slight boost in efficiency at the cost of aesthetics and installation hassle and will continue to use Windows.
I bought a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed. You'd expect that if it's pre-installed then everything would work fantastic. Here are my pain points:
My main pain point with Linux is lack of hibernate. This sometimes results in lost work.
Resuming from suspend doesn't work properly; sometimes my keyboard or the sound stops working.
I can't get Flash player to play sound through my TV.
The Software Centre sometimes doesn't work, and I have to resort to the command line.
Freezing.
Sound not working completely. Need to restart.
I have been using Linux exclusively since 1998, when installing Linux on a PC was an adventure. My first distro was Redhat 6.1 which I bought at the local BestBuy--on 3.5" floppies. Getting various bits of hardware was tricky (anybody remember the ZipDrive?), and the dialup connection I had in those days was iffy, but I got everything to work with the help of a guy at my ISP who was a Linux geek. I had trouble downloading and installing updates because I had difficulties with the CLI incantations. Then I tried Mandrake 8.0, this time on CD on a different machine. Still had trouble with urpmi, but the installation was much easier than on earlier machines. Finally, I switched to Ubuntu 6.06 and switched from dialup to DSL, and I have stayed with it ever since. I currently have Ubuntu 17.04 on an HP notebook. The only solution to moving more users onto the Linux desktop is for we users to proselytize! I give out Ubuntu on usb keys as birthday and holiday gifts, and provide support whenever needed. Linux forever, down with M$!!!
Whatever Happened To the 'Year of Linux on Desktop'?
You know that's the joke, right?
If you want a serious answer, it's because it still doesn't "just work."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The mobile "devices" that are ubiquitous are not at all what I consider to be "Linux", from the perspective of a user. I have no control. None.
Cough. BS.
I have had Linux boxes running for years. No problem with updates.
I leave my Windows box up...a "magical" update comes down and the next thing I know my box is rebooted....
I have used Linux as my primary desktop since ~1997. As a software developer it is a power platform. The shell is critical. However, as a conventional desktop it is just not competitive with Windows. And OSX isn't either. Both Linux and OSX are below 4% market share. Vertical integration is very weak. Windows has an identity management system that allows transparent filesharing, advanced group based access control, sophisticated business applications. Getting stuff like that to work on Linux is too difficult or simply not possible. So software venders focus on the Windows platform. And rightly so. I just tried and application that recently released a Beta for Linux and it was a total fail. I occasionally dabble in engineering related stuff and I have to have a Windows machine for all of the various programs for cad, PCB design, simulation. Yeah, programs like that exist for Linux but they're just not good. And I know people agree with me that the GNOME desktop has actually regressed. It used to be much more usable. But they dumbed it down for reasons that where not entirely clear. My guess would be that when new developers come along, they have a tendency to want to re-write everything from scratch. I'm not diametrically opposed to this strategy but you better come up with something that was at least as good as what you're dumping. And that didn't happen. There are other integration related issues as well. For example, for as long as I can recall there has always been a fight between X and the desktop over who should remember the positions of windows. X says applications should save that information and recall it when re-launching an app. Desktop people think it should be handled by lower level facilities. Now, whenever logout and back in, all of my terminal windows have to be re-launced and repositioned (I run 6-8 terms on 4-5 workspaces). That is something that actually used to work somewhat in GNOME. It worked in WindowMaker IIRC. The Linux desktop has been dumbed way down to the point where it's not nearly as useful as it used to be. At least not for people doing more than surfing the web and email. Might as well just get a Chomebook for that.
What is this "desktop" you speak of?
Users will not come until the most used programs come to Linux.
Companies will not make program for Linux until there are many users
Even Window's 10 Bash is better than Cygwin...(and I LIKED Cygwin)
The main reason I dual boot is for all the games that aren't available on Linux. Wine isn't a good answer. Even if I can get a game to work under Wine, and can get decent performance, the next update to Wine is too likely to break it.
Plus, decent 3d accelerated graphics is still a pain to get working in Linux. Best chance is to get whatever card from a generation or 2 ago that is the most standard and tested. Without hardware acceleration, a lot of games are unplayable. Too often, open source drivers fall back on dog slow software emulation. Proprietary drivers have even more bugs. Nvidia and AMD (ATI Radeon) haven't been friendly enough. Possibly Intel's integrated HD graphics may be the best supported, because Intel is trying to upgrade their offerings in this market and seeks ways to differentiate themselves. But those are barely adequate low end performers.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
...when all users move to "the cloud".
There will be no money to be made with standalone PCs with local OSes, and that's when all the businesses will stop putting money into it. Deal with it, bitches.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Desktops are old hat. They remain, mainly, in places where huge (relatively) local computing power is needed and there's no problem with power usage. And in the Mom's Basement data center where olde stuff stays in use as long as it can be patched, then has usable parts moved to other boxen that still sort of work.
Corporate desktops will run Windows until there are no more corporate desktops. It's getting there - most new corporate is now laptops with docks for a nicer monitor and a keyboard big enough for fingers. Corporate LAPTOPS will also continue to use Windows as long as MS makes Enterprise available for manageability. Just like nobody got fire for buying IBM mainframes, nobody gets fired for buying Windows in corporate, and they have the internal or contracted support to handle it. But look in their server rooms (or those of their cloud service providers) and what do you find? Largely Linux.
As another pointed out, once you move into other venues, *nix rules. Android is everywhere (Linux); iOS is at least partly *nix based. Nearly every "Thing" with a CPU runs some flavor of stripped-down *nix, often Linux. Try finding a Windows tablet or phone these days outside of overpriced Surface and cheap (in all respects - barely usable) off-brand 2-in-1. And that little range-extender box behind your TV or thermostat on the internet? Linux most likely.
So who cares? Desktop is over and done with; laptop market is where it is for ordinary serious computer use; and Linux rules otherwise.
Windows & MAC now automagically update behind the scenes and mostly work.
I don't know about Mac, but if Windows upgrades were so magical, why do I end up cursing Microsoft every time they happen?
Year of linux had been deprecated then forked 10 times.
The closest it's been was 2010. It's been all downhill since. Gnome 3, Systemd, etc... Nobody has really been able to get the mojo back. Not even Cinnamon/Mint.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
As long as Microsoft has OEMs paying for Windows for each PC shipped, whether they install it or not, Linux will not rule. The Microsoft Tax is more than a price increase. It's also a lock-in.
It's next year, of course.
From the very first days I ever heard the term, there were only two sorts of people who ever used it:
1) Linux people who were making a joke
2) Linux-haters
It's a meaningless thing.
Linux will never take over the desktop. Only the GNU Hurd kernel can save us.
OK, joking aside I've seen casual Linux use on the desktop and unlike in previous years it looked responsive and as clean as any other UI. It just doesn't seem like it's going to ever sweep the market in one year. At this point the desktop is also a kind of sad sister for the marketing types so fewer people even care about this question. Everything is mobile, be it phone or tablet, and everything is touch. There are open source OS's everywhere on devices; but they are not necessarily Linux and they aren't desktops. Man of these things are also locked down at a lower level. It turns out that most consumers are willing to accept tech that is even LESS OPEN THAN WINDOWS. That doesn't bode well for any free/oss on the desktop... to the extent that people care about the desktop.
I doubt we will really see Linux on the corporate desktop any time soon but we will see it powering more and more kiosks and self-serving style computing. I can see Linux powering things like vending machines and kiosks selling services.
Here is a blast from the past for you:
https://linux.slashdot.org/sto...
If I install Windows there is one version of it, Win 10; same with Apple. If I install Linux which distro, or even non-gnu. Until all the Linuxers come together and agree, "I think this distro is horrible but one Linux on a desktop is better than a good Linux" it won't happen.
Similar things need to happen with stuff like Vi vs Emacs.
There's too much infighting.
Controls need to be changed to match Windows or Apple.
As does appearence. Of course it can still be changable.
Being open/free might actually make it harder to be desktopable.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Aah. The good old days. I used Red Hat Linux on an AST Ascentia J50 laptop for a few years around 1997 while going to university. I think the year of the Linux on Desktop was supposed to b. There must have been a Slashdot article back then about it.
Shit. This makes me feel old.
Wait till you get to my age and your eyes start failing you. We'll see how you like you tiny phone screens then. And your tiny on-screen keyboards when you fingers are no longer as young and agile as they are now.
Linux is almost usable as a desktop right right now. The guy who ran the "linux sucks" presentations just had his last talk in 2017. Year after year, he'd bring up the same problems over and over, but eventually they did get fixed (albeit a lot later than promised). It's not as if every problem is currently fixed, but most have been and the few remaining have clear paths to being fixed. Or to put it another way, enough stuff has been fixed or almost fixed to no longer warrant further "linux sucks" presentations.
All that's really left is widespread integration of Wayland (and deprecation of xfree86, x.org), stable and high performance open source graphics drivers, game support.
While that's not that many things, those things are big and they are dealbreakers. I wouldn't recommend linux to a gamer now, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"Linux Sucks... For the Last Time" - 2017
Android is based on the Linux kernel. If you want, you can use it via a Unix command line. Add the missing command line tools if you want the full experience.
Perhaps a better question would be, why does open source suck at making a desktop/mobile platform, while a company which uses the same open source managed to make a platform which displaced Windows as the #1 OS in use. IMHO it's user friendliness. The programmers who make open source projects are notorious for prioritizing their own needs above their users', and demand some sort of worship from users (don't ever piss off a programmer in an open source support forum if you ever want a particular bug fixed). This results in an obtuse user interface with poor documentation, and a steep learning curve. That may work for the 5% of the population who are geeks, programmers, and tinkerers who love to spend time figuring stuff out, but it doesn't work for the remaining 95%. Google just took that obtuse open source, found a bunch of skilled programmers who could grok that obtuseness, and paid them to make it friendly to use for the 95% (money in lieu of worship). And it took over the world.
The planet has 7 - 8 billion people.
Probably it will take another 100 years till they all have moved to the cloud.
Oh, you did not mean that cloud ... my mistake.
Honestly: why would *I* move to the cloud? I have a laptop. Everything that is essential is on that laptop and on the backups. Why would I move to the cloud? So I have no access to my stuff in a plane, train? In a foreign country with absurd internet costs ... or I have to buy a new sim card first and probably a new phone as my iPhone has no dual sims?
The only interesting part about clouds is storage for low GB phones. For real computers it is completely irrelevant except for data exchange via drop box and a like.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Do you use Android? Do you spend more time with your phone or tablet than on a workstation or laptop? Congratulations, you're in the year of the Linux desktop.
Meanwhile I've got an XBox One S for movies and some games, several generations of other game consoles, a couple of Raspberry Pis running Raspbian but often used to emulate older console and desktop systems, a WebOS smart TV, a Linux smart TV, a couple of Chromecasts, a Windows desktop for games, a Linux desktop for personal non-game use, a Linux laptop for travel, a Mac desktop for company work that mostly connects to Linux systems and runs Linux VMs, a Mac laptop for company work that mostly connects to Linux machines or to my work desktop, two Android phones one each for work and personal use, and a non-Fire Kindle for reading without interruptions like I get on my other devices. My girlfriend has a Mac laptop, a Linux desktop, and an Android phone.
So... what's the question again?
Circa late 90's - Windows was easier and had better hardware support
Circa early 2000's - Macs were easier and more secure (than windows) but windows still worked for many
Circa late 2000's - Mobile computing is easier and more convenient
Circa now - Less and less people are tied to full-fat desktop computers with mobile devices, IoT devices, streaming set-top boxes and cloud computing doing most of the heavy lifting for non-professional computing type people.
Linux never got mindshare because it couldn't do anything that other easier and more popular platforms could not do.
Ask Microsoft why their mobile phones fell flat - their reasons are similar to why Linux has not (and probably never will) succeed on the desktop.
The linux community needs to stop obsessing over the desktop - the market simply doesn't want it. Take comfort in the fact that linux is everywhere but the desktop - that's a hell of an accomplishment.
Almost there...
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Macs don't upgrade behind the scene.
They ask, you say yes or no.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Android has become even more insufferable than Windows, with annoying useless spyware/adware programs pre-loaded that most users have no way at all to remove, due to device makers not providing hardware drivers and software access permission.
Also (partly due to that?) Android has the charming feature of updating until the meager memory fills up, and then you,,,, ummm,,, what? Then you go buy a new one. Because the vast majority of people with a device in this state have no idea what to do with the thing after it keeps warning that it can't get updates. They assume that they shouldn't keep using it, but they don't know what to do when there's twelve programs named Google, Google+, Google.com, Google.service, Google.accounts, Google.user and so on. -And you can't delete ANY of them anyway, even if you did know what to get rid of.
Android is an OS that device makers wanted; its main feature is that it can be locked down against modification--and Google catered heavily to that desire. It's not the one that users wanted.
First, the submitter has it backwards. Windows is losing ground in the consumer space to Apple and others. Apple is not gaining much in the Enterprise space - just a bit. Mostly Windows is solid in the Enterprise and really falling flat with consumer.
Anyway, the question really should be - whatever happened to the desktop? The "Desktop" is going away in favor of simpler platforms. So Linux doesn't really need to have a "year of Linux on the desktop" anymore. It won already - just morphed into Android. Windows will continue to hold onto the legacy desktop market as it shrinks away - long tail there, but shrinking.
There is no use case for which the Linux Desktop is the best choice. Not anymore.
For a while, Linux targeted Grandma sending email and browsing the web, and almost became relevant for that use case, but then the iPhone happened. Grandma uses a phone or a tablet now.
Who uses Desktop PCs today?
-Office workers
-Gamers
-Content producers
Linux is awful for all those use cases, and remains so because the Linux Desktop community can't pull its head out of its ass about how great it is as a platform for web browsing and email to do a goddamned thing about it. Even today, with Windows 10 becoming more and more user-hostile, Linux Desktop is still worse.
It's on Windows 10 toda! What? You said you Windows on the desktop right??
http://saveie6.com/
For me it happened in 2009, where I had this release of reality when I realized there was nothing that Windows had that I couldn't do it on Linux Mint/SUSE. Before that it was a hit and miss and using Virtualbox.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Linux has plenty of nerds that are software engineers developing software. Something Linux and pretty much the entire F/OSS ecosystem is missing is quality UX/UI designers and engineers. There isn't much by way of decent collaboration tools in this department. Another area of interest is the lack of technical writers to write up solid documentation. Instead, our community is full of forum threads that consist of only two posts: someone asking a question, and that person getting a reply to "just fucking google it" (which btw this forum thread usually *IS* the top result on google)
"It was already a great desktop, and it still is."
"D'oh," indeed! All one has to do to understand why Linux (Unix) hasn't conquered the desktop is read this thread. 99% of the comments are dismissive or contemptuous of people who like to use well-designed, responsive GUIs. Even the ancient, awful Windows desktop makes Linux efforts look like jokes.
Most of the people who work on GUIs for Linux seem to produce code and designs that indicate they were forced to do so because some suit said "Linux must conquer the desktop!" Consequently, even the engineer-targeted GUI software on Linux is an overly complex, non-responsive joke. (Eclipse, I'm talkin' about you... and Eclipse is one of the more usable ones.)
iPhones and Androids have Unix under the covers, but completely replace it as a way of interacting. What the user sees was written by people who actually care about user interfaces.
I have been using Unix and later Linux since 1989. I use it every day, but it will never "conquer the desktop" until people who write Linux desktop apps take the desktop GUI seriously.
There are no Linux-haters. Seriously, who has time to waste "hating" a piece of software that they know nothing about and/or don't have to use if they don't want to.
The only "Linux-haters" out there are in the minds of paranoid Linus Torvald worshipers who like to create a false sense of community by playing the card of the misunderstood and oppressed minority elite who has to stick together to combat the hords of non-linux-using barbarians that are out to get them.
Oh, and trolls, who like to piss-off linux worshippers just for the lulz.
OS X is gaining ground how? Every number I've seen shows Mac market share is dropping YoY. (Probably due to the substandard hardware/OS and lack of vendor commitment to the platform.)
There is no such thing as "macOS X". It was called Mac OS X before. The new name is macOS.
#DeleteFacebook
Android is a horrible example to use of Linux being popular. In fact, it shows the complete opposite: Linux can only become a widely used consumer OS kernel when users and developers have absolutely no idea it's there, and it's thoroughly hidden under many layers of abstraction.
Google could silently replace the Linux kernel with some other kernel, and Android users and developers would have no idea it had even happened. That just goes to show how irrelevant Linux is within the Android ecosystem. Yeah, it's present, but nobody cares that it's present.
We may actually see a kernel replacement along those lines happen, with Google Fuchsia being in the works.
Linux contributes almost nothing to Android's success. Android could have been just as much of a success if they had used the NetBSD kernel or some other kernel instead. The success of Android is in its application framework and its userland apps, which have nothing to do with Linux at all.
Android shows exactly what needs to happen if Linux does want to be successful on desktops and laptops. Almost all of the GNU utilities, X, Wayland, GNOME, GTK+, systemd, PulseAudio, and other open source software will need to be thrown out and replaced with a far more cohesive and sane userland stack.
Analogy time:
McDonalds serves _billions._ No one is arguing that their quantity is even remotely comparably to quality. McDonalds excels at selling A LOT of cheap, shit food.
Likewise, the analogy to Operating Systems on the desktop is applicable:
* Windows = Quantity
* Linux = Quality
Although I would argue that Linux on the Desktop was NEVER about quantity, but about Freedom. Quality was always an afterthought.
Linux has failed to gain any serious traction on the desktop because:
1. "Windows is Good Enough" and "Momentum"
a) Disrupting the Windows desktop is almost impossible because the _casual_ Windows user doesn't give a fuck about freedom.
b) Likewise, game developers don't give a fuck about Linux because there is (almost) zero money in compared to Windows. Everyone and their dog is chasing after the "Fee-to-Play" bullshit model because whales and dolphins are where the _real_ money is.
2. Linux has never had anyone understand _good_ UI design.
Linux's core philosophy has aways been to copy what others are doing. What innovation it has done was never in the GUI space. The complete clusterfucks of KDE and GNOME, year and year, prove that they people are out of touch with Function and instead focus on Form at the expense of Function.
3. There is no one to enforce "standards"
Windows succeeded as game machines because everyone bought into the DirectX bullshit. And while we can debate the politics of Microsoft all day, the fact remains that there is nothing equivalent on the Linux side. The LSB, Linux Base Standard, is a step in the right direction, but there needs to be _standard_ APIs _across_ kernel version. The clusterfuck of PulseAudio is another example. Linux has "too many chefs in the kitchen with the majority re-inventing the oven". Instead we get half-assed implementations of everyone doing things their own way because "the other guys suck."
OpenGL ES has been a success because it provided a _standard_ across almost every device. Apple has always had Not-Invented-Here syndrome so they, like MS, have been pushing their proprietary APIs. If developers AND _users_ weren't morons they would _insist_ on ONE API across EVERY platform. But again, most people don't give a fuck about doing things "right" so we end with a shitty heterogeneous environment instead of a homogenous environment where implementation is held accountable to a the design specifications.
Using a bullshit metric of "popularity" as success nullifies the facts where Linux HAS been successful:
* Gee, 99.6% of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world run Linux. /sarcasm I wish I could "fail" like that!
* Android has over 2 BILLION devices, again running Linux. /sarcasm Again, I wish I could "fail" like that.
I've been using Linux off and on since the Slackware days. These days I have a dedicated Linux box, (along with Windows and OSX machines.) The fact of the matter is that _every_ Operating System sucks -- no one cares about switching from one crappy OS to another crappy OS. There are always strengths and weaknesses of every platform.
Apple, Google, and Microsoft are NOT interested in freedom. All they care about is profit and their hawking their proprietary crap. NOTHING will ever change until _everyone_ else decides there needs to be a better system and I don't ever see that happening. The problem is no one has the time, money, expertise, or status to pull this off, so we are stuck with crappy OS's that "sort of" do the job but suck in some way or another.
The rest of us just go back to using these crappy platforms complaining about it. :-/
Video Drivers
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
At least for me..
OSX is based on BSD, does that count?
Philosophically, soft of. People really wanted *nix on personal computers. Few cared about the politics, the "cause", behind Linux; they just wanted *nix in the practical sense. Which is why some switched(*) to Mac OS X. It provided *nix along side a desktop with an ecosystem of commercial applications.
... Linux will likely continue to dominate there. But the "desktop" ... we'll likely be making "year of the Linux desktop" jokes for quite some time.
Today we also have the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" which essentially gives you Linux along side the dominant desktop environment and the dominant ecosystem of commercial applications. More will switch(*), people who never cared much for the politics, people who just wanted *nix.
(*) "Switch" being used in a figurative sense since many Linux users never really "switched". They dual booted. Between macOS and the Windows Subsystem for Linux, dual booting isn't all that necessary anymore.
Now for that headless servers in the data center, the closet, or the AWS or Google cloud server instance
I was there the first time the "year of Linux on the desktop" was run up a jury-rigged flag pole.
It puts me in mind of Olbermann's fifty phrases of Trump "becoming" presidential.
Never believed it the first time, nor any of the times thereafter.
Olbermann shtick is to become so repetitive as to render himself completely unlistenable to anyone with access to a supplemental news source. I think he regards this grinding hatchet job as a form of insistent emphasis. It's perhaps also why the sound bite on his media channel features a heavy drum. Case in point, I didn't even finish the above clip. But the passage I quoted is excellent, which is why I keep going back, for the brief moments when Olbermann punches through this endless brow beating.
Olbermann is right about this. Trump successfully reads off a teleprompter for an entire thirty minutes, and five minutes later many in the media proclaim a shotgun marriage to an elf princess, and the reclamation of Elendil's throne consummated. True, Aragorn did put his hand on the same Saudi orb, but then again he also killed some living, breathing Uruk-hai. Advantage, Aragorn.
The year of Linux on the desktop is a turtle race with Trump becoming presidential. Always has been, always will be.
Same media dunce caps, to a mortal certainty.
Indeed, Elrond, we've now had megapixel screen buffers for an age of men.
Man, can't imagine what mystic wandering in the wilderness might have invented that bodge. Yes, and he was also subject to an endless litany of premature coronation (one suspects trigger-happy journalism interns vying for first post), until finally breaking through with the iPhone.
2007: official year of Apple finally kicking everyone's ass, after thirty years of overblown self-aggrandizement.
There's the rub: once in a long while, a princess finally does kiss the right frog.
> more rapid degradation of the operating system as it tries harder to cater to everybody.
That would have been a reasonable prediction 30 years ago. For the last couple decades, almost all supercomputers have used Linux, as have many embedded systems, most web servers, and now most phones / mobile devices use Linux, each with an appropriate UI on top. The fact is, Linux does suit a vast array of very different use cases, and that has worked out very well.
One reason that has worked well is new use cases, such as mobile and cloud. When there was suddenly a need for an operating system well-suited to run the hardware cloud hosts, Amazon and others choose the OS that had already been proven to be quite flexible, and made it even more flexible as they extended it's usefulness in that role. When the Android team needed as OS (not GUI shell) well-suited for advanced mobile devices, they chose Linux because it had been proven to be flexible. They made it even more flexible. So it's a cycle. The more different uses Linux is put to, the more flexible and modular it becomes, making it well suited to applications that don't even exist yet.
... with a format. Basically every year they say it's the year of Linux on the desktop.
Only a minuscule percentage of the potential market actually does anything which requires a real PC. Of those people, the vast majority of home users will never edit a video, or compile a program
With AP Computer Science becoming more common in high schools, I expect more people to end up compiling a program sometime in their lives. What are CS students supposed to use if not a PC? A phone with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, an HDMI or Chromecast output to a TV, and an SSH connection to a rented server?
Desktops as we know them are going away. We are seeing a trend toward increased reliance on mobile devices, even at the desk.
There are two main operating systems on those mobile devices, iOS and Android. Android has about an 80-85% share of the mobile market worldwide. iOS is around 12-18%, depending on who's doing the study.
Five times as many mobile devices as PCs are sold each year.
Android has, at its base, a Linux kernel. Sure, the hardware doesn't look anything like a desktop machine; Android doesn't look like a traditional Linux distribution; the update and application management is different; and the applications are different, but it's still Linux.
When Android and ChromeOS devices become the platform of choice, we will have achieved the Year of Linux on the Desktop. Maybe we already have.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Remember all those Chromebooks that have been outselling Windows And Macs in schools? Aren't they based on Linux? (although stripped down quite a bit.)
Linux rocks as a glorified web browser, but starts to go downhill as soon as you try to do serious desktop work with it.
Photography: Gimp has been promising 16bit per channel for years now. Serious photographers cannot live without that.
3D CAD: Solidworks and Autodesk Fusion 360 are where it's at. Neither will run on linux. VMs will not work because of the heavy 3D GFX requirements.
Games: Enough said.
Email: Exchange support is still flaky. Exchange is the corporate standard.
Office productivity: The basics are ok, and if everyone in the office was using open source there would be a lot less pain. However, subtle file incompatibilities continue to ruin our day, year after year.
Here's what really gets my goat. Keyboard and mouse support. Logitech do not support linux. Who else makes keyboards and mice with extra buttons and keys that do? The first three app types I listed really benefit from extra keys.
LOL longest troll post I've seen.
Loved the part about how small developers can't afford QT, nice touch.
There is a lot of truth to that. The article mentions business desktop and consumer desktop.
Microsoft is still very popular on business desktops, of course. Windows on the desktop is NOT popular with consumers. Consumers have largely left the Windows desktop, moving to Android. Even if you leave out iPhone, people bought more Android devices last year than the total sales of Windows devices by both business and consumers combined. For consumers, Android and the mobile form factor are three to four times more popular than the Windows desktop.
Of course, with the UI on Android, some of the storage and processing is being done on the server - by Linux. What consumers use is a Linux-based product which communicates to other Linux-based systems.
While saying "Windows is most popular on the desktop" is technically true, it's a lot like saying "David Duke is popular with the KKK". True, but that doesn't mean that either Windows or David Duke are well-liked.
I am a long-time Linux user, starting back when I was in high school in the late 90s. I used it exclusively through college (wrote all my papers in LaTeX), and for many years of my adult life. Several years ago, when I had my first child, I realized that even though I really enjoyed endlessly tweaking and configuring all my Linux systems, I simply didn't have time for it. So until very recently, I've been using Windows 7.
Now my kids, though still young, are past the epic time-drain of baby-/infant-hood. Furthermore, as it's been several years, I was curious to see how Linux has evolved for desktop use. (Note that, during this Linux desktop hiatus, I continued to run it on my servers, and admin it professionally for my job.) All that, combined with a little hardware shuffle, caused me to revisit Linux for my desktop. I don't plan to leave it just yet, but there are times when I wonder if I made the right choice.
The biggest problem is that I find things still don't "just work". Some examples in my case:
And then there are the little things. I still buy audio CDs, though I do rip them to FLAC. Under Windows, ExactAudioCopy was wonderful. I know there are no shortage of ripping tools under Linux, but I've yet to find one that "just works" as comprehensively as EAC. Recently I've purchased a bunch of two-CD sets. I like to merge the contents of both discs into one folder and one contiguous numbering scheme (e.g. 1-17 instead of 1-9 and 1-8). EAC would do that after clicking on a checkbox and indicating the new starting number. Haven't found a tool that does that in Linux yet. So I not only have to rename all the FLAC files, but edit their metadata as well (since the metadata contains TRACKNUMBER and TRACKTOTAL fields).
In the sp
I have trouble understanding why anyone would actually want to devote resources to this. Linux is extremely, extremely, extremely awesome for the web applications my company deploys (LAMP, Django, bizarre Java applications.) I don't understand why there would be a push to make Linux into a viable desktop solution, when it is already an extremely viable server solution. It's also extremely viable for phones, and for embedded applications. What, are you going to be running Windows to control your microcontroller?
This to me seems like two things:
1.) A slow news day.
2.) Linux trying to be something that it's not, instead of people appreciating what it is.
1.) Firefox has driven itself off a cliff in an attempt to be the better Chrome. We had a useful browser that worked on many different platforms; we now have something that doesn't even work with its own plugins from a generation ago.
2.) Video drivers. We had this one down with Flgrx (or whatever it was called) with AMD, and Nvidia wasn't half bad; the current set of open-source drivers for cards like the RX480 is deplorable (We can do 4K @60Hz in Windows, but not in Linux....). And the drivers are STILL having issues where there is an Intel iGPU and a dGPU (at least of an AMD origin).
In short, things have gotten worse on the Linux platform, and it's not because MS changed the secret sauce again; it's because of apathy and stupidity.
Go read Qt's commercial terms, you ignorant fuckwit.
Seriously, I don't care any more. I have been using Linux as my only desktop (KDE) for years and it works for me. I don't have the problems with graphics/wireless/bluetooth or whatever that others will inevitably post - it works for me. I have to use Windows 7 at work, but I much prefer KDE. I have hardly any experience of Windows 8 or 10, but what little I have, I hated. The last 15+ years have been the Year of Linux on the Desktop for me. I don't care what you use.
Eh?
Consumer have largely left the desktop, period.
Lots of people I know who used to slog around laptops or have a desktop at home now rely entirely on their pocket computer (whatever OS it is running) for everything.
As I see it, it's desktop-vs-pocket, not Windows vs Android: Android is not [intended to be] a desktop operating system.
Kid-proof tablet..
Chromebooks run Linux and they're all over the place.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
I've been running linux on my primary desktops both at home and work since 1999. I've lived through multi-hour kernel compilations in order to get sound out of a Soundblaster AWE512, and recompiling XFree86 to get 2D acceleration going on an S3 Virge DX. I've spent a lot of time with RedHat 3, Slackware, Gentoo, Mandriva, CentOS and Fedora distros over the years, in addition to others. I've hacked DSP code in the kernel for the worlds best ever in-car mp3 player (empeg).
ie, I've been around the block. My opinions aren't those of a newb that needs to try harder, those of a neckbeard jaded with living in hope for so long.
I think much of the problem is that most of the talent that would have started working on open-source desktop applications went into mobile app development instead.
Captcha: Suffered. LOL
So what did happen? Well, around 2003 Linux-based distros got good enough to run for many tasks that you'd have used Windows for, and OS X at the time couldn't hold a candle to either.
I've passed through SuSE, Mandrake, RedHat (7-9, first Fedoras were crap so I switched to) Debian (Sarge, back when it was Testing branch).
So Debian ~3 -> 9 on a variety of personal and professional machines, mostly desktops before 2007, exclusively laptops ever since, with KDE as .. DE because it's the most featureful out there.
Lightweight and fast, I've never wanted to go back to something else. I try Windows on every new laptop I get, the experience is somehow somewhat more polished and more annoying at the same time. Jumping through hoops to get stuff running, crashes in major pieces of software (Office!!!) like it's 1999.. I usually get to wipe everything away after a couple of weeks of having both the old system and the new tested in parallel. The wife got a Macbook Pro (coming from Windows) and hated it, I got to play with it and hated it.
Yes you can run a variant of Ubuntu on Windows now, yes you have homebrew on macOS, but why not go directly to the base system - and just use Linux? The flexibility to do what you want is just fantastic and for that alone, I could not switch to something else.
Thank you to the FOSS community and contribuitors of all kinds for making Linux on the Desktop (and mobile and server and network and ..) a reality - for a long time now.
.... that "The year of the Linux Desktop" is already here, just as "The Year of the Porsche Car" is.
- of course.
1. Linux won't run everything that Windows will run, and is not as dumbed-down as Windows is, so the average person who has little to no technical knowledge of computers can't understand Linux, can't be bothered to learn something new, and doesn't have any reason to even try in the first place. Furthermore they don't really care how much Microsoft is datamining them with Windows, invading their privacy, or the fact that Microsoft becomes the de-facto owner of the computer the consumer bought and paid for with their own money, not so long as they can browse the web, send and receive email, and watch cat videos on YouTube.
2. Microsoft is doing everything it can to either kill Linux as a viable alternative, or more lately, subverting, annexing, and otherwise taking over Linux; they want Microsoft to be the only producer of operating systems for computing devices, and they don't care what they have to do to accomplish that.
The Linux community is toxic to any sort of drive to make Linux acceptable or usable as a general purpose it just works desktop device. Look at how everyone collectively frothed at the mouth over pulseaudio. Well guess what, intelligent and seamless audio switching is an actual use case for many on the desktop. Event based service management is also a requirement for a machine that goes in and out of sleep and bounces from network to network. As is some basic crap like trusting that the lock screen will actually lock the computer.
Yet with every change to make Linux desktop friendly the vets feel like they get personally attacked (and to be fair, they are being). The hacker desktop we love is not compatible with the general user desktop case.
Go read Qt's commercial terms,
Maybe YOU should read them. You need a commercial license if you want to produce closed-source proprietary products. You can still sell your product / offer support, etc., without a commercial license, you just have to provide source.
And Qt is not the only game in town.
All I got to say is.. when I launched Civilization 6 on my Linux desktop, it just said 'Error cannot continue.' No other messages.
Which is sad, cuz Factorio runs great and Steam itself runs fine too.
Linux desktop has made huge strides toward usability for anyone, but.. it's not "there" yet. Getting there, getting better every day.
> it's viral in the sense that it can impose a legal obligation to disclose one's work unless you're very careful.
Huh? Why on earth would you use GPL'd code if you don't want to disclose your work? The GPL doesn't "impose" any obligation. It just allows you to distribute source or binaries with source, but not binaries without source.
GPL is for sharing, not for just taking. If your company is stupid enough to not comprehend that, then they deserve to get the book thrown at them.
The year of the Linux desktop has past mostly unnoticed. And the OS is nothing more than a terminal for services. Just got a Chromebook for 130€ to try out this cloud thing. (I'm a 20 year Linux user and my other portable is a MB Air from 2011). The Chromebook concept is amazing. Dirt cheap, boots in seconds, runs for hours on a single charge with a very small battery (ARM system) and is totally idiot safe, usable but the other 99.999% of the population who aren't computer experts like us. Two-factor auth setup with two mouseclicks.
Given, I have to do *everything* with cloud services now (IDE, CI, Testing, Documents, Storage, etc.) and everything is hooked to accounts in the cloud. But as you know, that's not just disadvantage but also comes with huge advantages. Having Travis and Codeanywhere do the setup work for me lets me focus on coding. If the Chromebook gets stolen, I'll disable it remotely and pick up where I left somewhere else. I don't have to think twice about syncing my Smartphone with the stuff I did on the cBook.
Note that this stuff can be used by some kid in the third world aswell. Which is exactly how Google intended it to be.
You have to hand it to Google, when it comes to enablement, they are lightyears ahead of everybody else, including Apple.
Bottom line: The Linux Desktop is long since here and it will take the world in a storm. It's called Chrome OS.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I was a gamer; and also very familiar with the Windows environment since I was the "tech support" for everyone in the neighborhood when I was growing up.
Needless to say I was always impressed with when I had a chance to play with it, I just had no real incentive to switch. Any family member's PC that I work with now usually ends up with a fresh Ubuntu install though; cause most of them just use their PCs/Laptops for Facebook and don't feel like shelling out $$$ for Windows (understandably).
I tend to rant.
You are forgetting the other main reason those businesses or organizations use it: because it is free (as in beer, not as in a naked hippie skipping in the field).
Yes, that's what the thread is about - getting commercial devs to participate so the linux desktop gains some traction. Most commercial devs aren't operating under a model where they're going to give you their source code. Go ahead - ask Adobe or Quicken or AutoCAD or other large commercial devs for their source code. See how that works out for you. This isn't about some basement-dwelling dweeb whose mom brings them hot pockets while they're typing away. This is about why linux isn't a popular desktop, specifically, because important - to users - portions of the linux desktop app landscape are poorly populated by most commercial devs. READ.
The previous post *specifically* called out the mention of Qt's cost as troll. So the (accurate, specific) answer to that post was specific to Qt. The mention of Qt in the original post was an example, which is why it was written "such as." READ.
If all you can do is fail to read what is posted and then argue with your own strawmen, its no wonder you don't understand what the problems are. READ.
Anybody remember Coherent?
That's fine. You keep sharing, and large commercial devs will keep producing for Windows and the Mac, and your "year of the linux desktop" will keep retreating into the future.
The question here is what's up with the linux desktop never gaining traction. The answer is, it's unattractive to commercial devs. You keep it the way it is, and it'll stay barren of the things it needs to compete.
I *understand* you and a lot of others don't care if it competes. But the story here is *why* it doesn't compete, and that's what I'm talking about. If you're too thick to understand the context, there's no helping you. Read TFS. It'll help.
A better question would be, What is a desktop?
Not many people use desktop anymore.
Computer phones have taken over, and yes most of them use Linux.
So Linux won!!!!
> XWindows isn't one,
XWindows isn't a thing.
It will not happen, because the desktop people insist in keeping their heads deep into you-know-where, coming up with the usability monstrosities that are Gnome, KDE and the now-defunct Unity. It is a good thing because that implies that the bad guys will stay focused on Windows (and Mac, to a much smaller extent) while leaving Linux alone. Alternatively, they may focus on the abominable Linux desktops above, and that is a good thing. In the meantime, I have a desktop that does everything I need, it does so efficiently, how I want it, and without much in the way of security risks, when it comes to the desktop itself. Life is good, and will carry on being good, for as long as Linux in the desktop maintains a negligible market share. So, keep up the good work, Gnome and KDE people.
I don't disagree with any particular thing you're saying, except the notion that the GPL is "viral."
The gratuitous insult at the end doesn't help. Disagreeing with you doesn't make me stupid.
" rely entirely on their pocket computer "
Checking your email isn't actual work. A phone or tablet can not replace GIS desktops.
The list of things a pocket thing can't do is pretty long...
Linux has no exposure in the consumer market. Most people with Android phones don't even realize they have Linux in their pocket.
Consequently, Linux isn't available from PC vendors. They don't think there's a market for it, there's no OS vendor willing/able to make it worth their while, Microsoft aggressively forces OEMs to choose between Windows and anything else, and OEMs know anyone looking for such a machine won't tolerate the bloatware they love to include (which doesn't exist anyway).
Then there's hardware support issues, mainly Video. The Linux desktop needs a breach point into the consumer market, the most likely candidate is a Linux gaming console (looking at you, Steam).
Always.
Do you have ESP?
Because it's not good enough.
All of my desktops and laptops are a flavor of Linux.
THere is a linux desktop, it's called chromium and it's in widespread use, especially in schools
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
why would *I* move to the cloud? I have a laptop.
1) By virtue of reading slashdot, you are a geeky weirdo, not a typical user. You'll never want to move to the cloud, until you become like your parents. You'll be the reason Linux will become the desktop OS of the year (forever actually).
2) You can operate on the cloud with a laptop. Its called a chromebook. Yeah, for those who care, some form of wireless network service will be ubiquitous for urban areas.
Why would I move to the cloud?
To not deal with Microsoft's haphazard software security updates. For your data to be slightly more secure once you move to cloud computing. Because one day a cloud service will offer the average user advantages over standalone OSs, like unlimited, ease of use backup of data, better price for computing services than a standalone PC (which seems to need bimonthly updates), and the whole "system" doesn't go obsolete, requiring repurchasing every few years.
And after the majority of users have moved to cloud services, one day you won't be able to use your credit ID to buy stuff, because the vendors on the internet will only want to sell stuff through the "secure" cloud. The gamers have long ago moved to cloud, because its costs nothing to send a video stream to your screen, while the cloud has preprocessed that gamer stream with its 1M of GPU units per cents of gamer time, and the user will never have to dick around with buying video cards and video card settings. You remember how long ago, EA Sports stopped selling a version of Madden Football to PCs? That'll happen for the cloud as well for other games. Besides, no consumer discrete GPU will be able to manage the imaging for your hologram room, where you'll do all your gaming and visiting distant friends and relatives.
Only neckbeards, survivalist whackjobs, and Alex Jones fans will want to have their own computing box they "control".
In a foreign country with absurd internet costs ...
There will always be people who want to go to a shithole and have internet access. Those people will have laptops running linux. Normal (non-rural) people will live at home, and the cloud will be ubiquitous, and they won't even realize that wireless networking services will be required to get their "screen" to work.
Microsoft is motivated to do this, but right now, the business sector is the only customer that really grasps the potential ROI. Once they're on board and datacenters and APIs are in place, Microsoft will figure out cheap ways to absorb the consumer market. If they don't, some company in India or China eventually will.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The reason is simple: We really hate Windows, but don't have a viable alternative. We really really want one, and Linux is a mature kernel with a lot of hardware support and no proprietary encumbrances, so it'd be really really nice if we could build a decent Desktop on it.
Unfortunately, no one has ever actually tried to do that. They keep making servers with a GUI on it. 250 variations on a theme and counting.
What needs to happen is for someone to ditch pretty much the entire user space on top of the kernel and start over with the Desktop and its use cases in mind. Like how android did with the smartphone, or how apple did with OSX (Mach, not Linux, I know. Same concept.).
It's not good enough.
With alot of users moving away from desktops and going for mobile devices, I'm not sure why anyone would still care about such a target. Given the amount of Android devices out there, Linux seems to be doing pretty damn well in that market, and I'll bet Android devices outnumber desktop computers these days
the one brand you can find that doesn't use Linux.
Is there still a consumer desktop market? The focus seems to be on mobile devices.
Qt is licensed under the LGPL.
If you dynamically link to the Qt libraries, you can sell your closed-source proprietary products without having to pay for a commercial license or share your source.
If you statically link to the Qt libraries, then you are required to either pay for a commercial license or share your source.
Apple's macOS X is quickly gaining ground among business customers and designers, and is already ahead of Linux.
wow, macOS is "ALREADY" ahead of Linux? That's like saying computers can already be made in laptop form so they needn't be plugged in anymore. Technically correct, but very misleading in its implication that what's being discussed is either very recent or obscure. MacOS being much more used than linux on the desktop is news from, oh, 30 years ago?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
In the meantime there is Oracle and Valve.
Your entire argument is MORONIC. The lesser version of the GPL does NOTHING to dissuade commercial developers. If anything, it accelerates their work on alternate platforms like game consoles. That was a thing even before the "Year of Linux" was a thing.
People who charge more for their software than the cost of your physical dwelling have no problem with the GPL and have been fine with it for a very long time.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> That's fine. You keep sharing, and large commercial devs will keep producing for Windows and the Mac, and your "year of the linux desktop" will keep retreating into the future.
Seriously? Where are you posting from 1995? Linux has been running expensive commercial software for about 20 years. It's been the reference platform for Oracle for nearly that long.
It's not just something that big companies "merely tolerate" but something they prefer.
The unhinged detached from all reality insanity of your post simply boggles the mind.
Windows software companies care about market share. That's why they ever pay any attention to Macs. That's also why they STOPPED paying attention to Macs before.
It has nothing to do with this "blast from the past" viral nonsense.
There are some real dinosaurs posting in here. I'm surprised I'm the one in the position to say that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Go read Qt's commercial terms,
Maybe YOU should read them. You need a commercial license if you want to produce closed-source proprietary products. You can still sell your product / offer support, etc., without a commercial license, you just have to provide source.
And Qt is not the only game in town.
Which is not true. I worked for a small company selling close source Qt applications. We started out using the LGPL version of Qt 4.3 and once we made enough revenue we switched to the commercial license so that we could use some of their close source libraries. We used v4.3 through v5.5 and the quality and support was excellent. Going from 4.x to 5.x was painless so claims that the product is poorly supported are bunk.
Largely modern OS's don't matter. 95% of what most people do is through the web browser, and even web browsers don't matter that much because of HTML5. HTML5 makes the OS war pointless. For the most part, the vast majority of computers are barely much more that terminals to get online for most people. (This is literally Google's whole business plan and the point of ChromeOS.) Sure *YOU* really, really, really need your own something-something software. That's fine. But most people could adopt ChromeOS and not really care that much.
TBH I think linux distros just missed the boat. I remember back when many things didn't 'just work' and digging in text config files was frustrating when many things were stubbornly undocumented. That might be not be the case now but... too late?
A new book by The MIT Press looks interesting: "For Fun and Profit: A History of the Free and Open Source Software Revolution".
There are so many misconceptions and outright lies being spread here it's just staggering.
Firstly, Android contains the Linux kernel and nothing else from GNU. Android cannot be considered a Linux distro in any form.
Secondly, Android is not a desktop OS and it's not meant for productivity.
Thirdly, this "Ask Slashdot" most likely asks about Linux distros (i.e. Linux/GNU) and sorry, until
1) These problems are somehow fixed or overcome // b.
and
2) We have a core Linux base (meaning common libraries with exact same APIs/ABIs supported for at least 5 years) which is shared between distros, so you can easily package software for any of them.
I'll tell you why I think Linux hasn't dominated the desktop - because it can't...it's just a kernel..... ...if we are talking about a Linux distro dominating the desktop then the real problem lies with various projects not being honest with themselves when it comes to way in which bad bugs are weeded out.
For example, I did a recent Ubuntu upgrade on my home machine and Gnome kept on locking up. Had I been non-technical then I would have been stuffed. Fortunately I persevered and the problem was fixed.
The reality in the world of Windows the user base is so big, they can be confident that on their preview rollouts they are getting just about every different type of hardware footprint there is. With any one linux distro, you can't do a preview programme and be confident you'll have a userbase large enough to be using all the different hardware / devices there is.
There has to be a load of money put into testing on each release so that it just works....with no catastrophic failures that a non-techy couldn't fix.
Also, the wider Linux community needs to stop with the "Windows crashes and Linux doesn't!" myth. I use both Windows and Linux and I can tell you that I have Linux crash at least once a year. The last time my home Windows PC crashed the Apple iphone wasn't even out - yes that long ago.
2005 was my "year of desktop/laptop". have been using linux since 1996ish. the "shiny" had worn off the 'tweaking it the nth degree' and by 2005 i didn't have to for general usability.
We've spent 30 years trying to open the eyes of the elderly and the technologically incompetent to the glorious potential of computers, but at the end of the day all they want to do is email or watch videos or play whatever Shariki knockoff is popular at the moment.
Normies ruin everything.
Same as before, though HUGE strides have been made. I'm writing this from Linux Mint as I speak. It's still not 100% plug and play (want to use DisplayPort without the screen randomly going off, or use multiple monitors easily without editing text files? HAHAHAHA NOOB). Also some proprietary software just won't work on it, like some vpn's or apps that are made for Mac OS and Windows (but not Linux). So while people like me use and love it (and wish some things will continue to get easier), there are still plenty of people who won't use it because it'd mean giving up a rare piece of software they cannot do without (and don't want to chance using WINE with), or need Windows or a Mac for work.
It still has come such a long way. It's even possible with Steam (and a non greedy WM like XFCE instead of Gnome, Cinnamon, or KDE) to have a stable and well performing gaming experience, which is awesome.
linux desktop is the same shit since i first tried it in 1999
Linux is not ready for mainstream desktop use. You need terminal to do anything useful, the basic user is not going to want to use the many different switches for man to figure out how to manipulate any program they may be using.
The UI of many pieces of software that run on Linux, often times looks dated, with setting menus that don't really do any good. Often times a end user will need help just to configure their software.
If a user needs help, many (I truly do mean many) of the people who can help them out, are fairly arrogant and have superiority complexes (way worse than the local Windows support users.) Towards the end of any support session, the end use often gets told that they need to learn something (often times related to terminal) to use Linux.
Linux will be ready for desktop prime time when it gets a really consistent look across the OS and apps, when you don't need terminal to do basic things, and their is actual nice support available.
Because what are the options here now? Windows 10 and MacOS. Spy ware and a fortune for closed hardware. Two corporations who, in different ways, think you do not own your own computer.
That is why some of us use Linux on the desktop and wish that making that painless would interest someone in Linux-land.
I also wish the British Museum would return all those things to the countries the British stole them from.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
How would we even know if it had happened if you won't even say what it means for it to be "The Year of the Linux Desktop"?
What should we expect to mark the occasion? A rain of penguins? An epidemic of unexplained neckbeards? A UN resolution announcing the International Year of the Linux Desktop? I don't think _you_ even know what you mean.
But there's no rule that a Linux distro has to have anything GNU in it.
A "Linux distro" is just a distribution of software that includes the Linux kernel, really.
> Whatever Happened To the "Year of Linux on Desktop"?
It depends on what you're asking by that.
If it's about being a complete, easy to use desktop, it already happened long ago. Linux is easier to use than Windows... by far.
This past week I wanted to do something really simple: I wanted to copy words with a double-click, a luxury I enjoy in Linux. Alas, that is not possible on Windows. It stubbornly insisted on copying a word and some 13 spaces after it, no matter what options I would turn on or off. Researching further the subject I came to the inevitable reply form Microsoft themselves: this is "by design". That is, clients want it (other people were asking for it), but we know better and that's the way it will be, that's how we roll.
Well, after some moments of anger, I came to the conclusion that such Microsoft reply was actually useful (a first!). I therefore quit trying to do it with MS products and saved as PDF. Adobe Reader works very well in that regard by the way. Problem solved. Unfortunately there's no copy-on-select and middle-click paste on Windows (I hoped Adobe Reader would do it, but unfortunately...). It's also a controlled environment, I cannot install whatever tools do that. But if someone can recommend a (free software) tool which does it, I might try to get them to allow it.
If it's about market share, I wonder whether it really matters, as development proceeds at a satisfactory pace (therefore we don't need a sufficient number of paying clients to make it happen). But, yes, few people use Linux, market share is too small.
Then again, so it is with electric cars, and some countries are drawing a line to effectively terminate the sales of new internal combustion engines. The writing is in the wall for them -- and for Windows, OS X and other closed alternatives.
It's funny to notice that some stores choose to use Linux for their operations, even ones that sell only Windows PCs.
> Do you see Linux getting a significant boost in the desktop market in the coming years?
To put it bluntly, perhaps, just not the way we're doing it now.
Distributions have the golden dream of one day convincing computer makers to ship Linux already installed. A few do, but only to offer lower cost products with usually bad screens, low RAM, weak processors etc.
Or, they want to believe that some enlightened user will leave the store and, first thing after coming home, will proceed to install Linux and erase Windows.
Sorry, not going to happen. I do that, many here probably do even bolder things, but this is about technology adoption (there's a model char, look for it, it's a sigmoid -- or the integral of a normal). Actually, it's even hard to convince people to use a computer, even with Windows.
Besides, some distributions are working very hard against Linux adoption. A lot of them went 64-bit only. Thus, they are forgoing older computers people already have (for instance, running XP or Windows 7) to go after those people who would install Linux on a quite new computer by removing its original OS. I suppose the sane thing to do would be exactly the opposite: supporting 32-bit with all they got, even on PCs which can do 64-bit -- if not for anything, just to reduce disk I/O. Of course, there are gamers and video editors which really demand 64-bit applications. Down-to-Earth folks though would have a hard time to even notice whether their kernel runs in 32-bit or 64-bit mode. Maybe we could make one of those Marketing stunts where they put two blindfolded users listening to a song and ask them which is 32-bit and which is 64-bit; that could be done with videos, too... minus the blindfold ;-P
Of course, if one got a 4K monitor 64-bit might help... but good luck on finding streaming of 4K content...
Me, I guess we should be battling this war on other fronts, to provide desktops to unemployed dudes, non-profits, religious associations. These people will be using pirate versions or older unsupported OSes and will
Windows 10 is pretty terrible. I support Windows 7, 8, and 10 for my parents' office (they are the ONLY people I'll do this kind of system support for.) I 100% agree with you that Windows 10 is horrible for supporting, at all, for all applications, except MAYBE video games.
I use Windows 7, and plan to until it end-of-life's out. You have until 2020 there. I think there is a Windows 8 revision that allows me to turn off all their annoying clippy touch screen crap (8.1?) that I'll try and use after Windows 7 isn't a viable option. I also use a ridiculously expensive Macbook Pro, which only made sense due to numerous iOS development contracts.
I have used Linux as a primary desktop, during the days of Gentoo. I am very, very, very grateful for this terrible experience, since it turned me into a pretty decent Linux system administrator. What I generally do is run Ubuntu inside a VM for all actual work, and use Chrome inside Windows 7, or OS X, for posting to slashdot. If I had no money, I'd run Ubuntu as a primary desktop on junk machines. This would effectively be a time-for-money trade-off.
The nice thing about this is that if someone really wants to make this happen, they can. However, I can think of about 10,000 things I would rather write software for than making Ubuntu more user friendly. I also see basically zero economic reason for any of the big corporate backers to do this either.
Mostly, I have trouble understanding why this is a general goal. I can understand why individuals in certain circumstances would want this, but as a general solution, I still don't understand. If you really want to, you can run Linux as a desktop. For most people, it's not their best option.
MY "Year of Linux" was 1998.
I paid $25 for a paper back book title "Learn Linux in 24 Hours", by Bill Brush. It had a RH 5.0 CD in the back. My Sony VAIO desktop was crashing several times an hour running Win95. I thought Sony's hardware was trash. However, running RH5.0 on it and the crashing ceased. The hardware was good. Win95 was trash.
I guess I'm a slow learner. It took me about 30 hours to convert from Windows think to Linux think, but the mouse worked the same as it did in Win3.11FWG. So, if the mouse is giving you a hard time in Windows don't bother switching to Linux.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
The best Linux desktop was ubuntu 4.10, it has been downhill from there. The feature disparity between Linux and windows/macOS became huge. I used Linux as primary desktop between 1997 and 2007, when I switched to Mac because I was tired of constantly compiling and patching stuff, then around 2015 I switched to windows. The professional work, even as stupid as a writer (ok product manager) Mac apps are inferior
I will be crude with my comment. In 2020 when Windows 7 is EOL, I will move to Linux. Just for run a virtual machine instal Windows 7 and use Linux as shell for defend myself from security holes. Most of my applications have no ports in Linux or have silly replacements, like GIMP that cannot control CYMK and will never do it. I need to made my job done, not beg in forums to some douchebags for fix their apps or add features.
For those that compare Android with Linux, I remind them that Android has a crapware walled garden app store, filled of apps that demands several payments for just keep working or be barely useful. If that were the same, Samba would ask you pay 0.99 USD per mounted device or you could need to buy packs of 100 su commands at 0.99USD. To have the same devcore is not meant that they run the same and have the same purpose. Android per-se is not meant for be a desktop OS but just a media device with connection to internet.
But still dream on that the Year of Linux Desktop had arrived or is here.
No. There's no polish in it. Maybe when wayland comes about it might help. But it has to always work. Every single thing that could go wrong needs to be thought about and how to make it easy to fix. Look at all the work that goes into windows and os x to make them consumer friendly, OS X especially. Relying on volunteers to help make the desktop better isn't good enough. And the companies like redhat that do have paid developers on linux, sell servers, desktops are secondary.
The only polish I see is done at the command line level, because that's what linux programmers care the most about.
There's also stubbornness and nostalgic. Such as those trying to hang onto xorg instead of embracing wayland. Or the fact that a linux distro still has to create a swap partition. Windows always had a swap file and OS X got rid of that a long time ago, instead using swap files. When you install windows and os x, you select the drive, or partition to install to, and that's it. No having to make a swap partition, but linux clings onto this relic feature.
The Linux desktop has accomplished 80% of what is needed to become a real competitor to Windows. It has some nice UIs and plenty of tools, if you're a tinkerer, anyway. But for the masses of people who barely know how to create a shortcut on their desktop, that last 20% is a huge effort.
Windows is far from perfect. But features like...plug in a new printer or scanner and it just knows what to do--that's really important, and takes a huge amount of effort to make it happen. It's so much effort that only the money brought to a problem by commercial interests can possibly come up with the money or time to pay for it.
The Linux world thinks that it's enough to get things to work, with "just a little configuration." That works fine for Linux enthusiasts. But until Grandma can do it herself, Linux won't be on everybody's desktop.
> Consumer have largely left the desktop, period.
Exactly. (Note my original subject line, "consumers left the desktop".)
> As I see it, it's desktop-vs-pocket, not Windows vs Android
Yes, Windows is popular on the desktop like Wichita brand is the most popular buggy whip.
What I didn't say in my earlier post is that consumers did NOT move from Windows desktops to Windows Phone. They left the desktop AND Windows behind, replacing them with phones/tablets and Android.
You m$ shill. Install linux and see for youself. Linux desktop is fine, you shill.
My name is Doctor John Chalisque David Emmanuel Allsup (http://john.allsup.co/ also a master of http://moo.style-taiji.net/).
This is a two part message. The first part is an announcement and summary judgement.
To get the summary judgement out of the way: windows does not suck. Vacuum cleaners suck, because it is their job. Nothing sucks like an electrolux, but not all vacuum cleaners suck in the same way. Windows is brittle because windows are supposed to break when Bobby Tables gets angry, so that this ball he hit can break something that isn't a living being. Bobby probably want's his ball back, but I would refer you to my friend Shrew Dinga the Cat to explain the concept of 'probably there'.
Vacuum cleaners suck, Windows looks pretty until it breaks, and of course the unwritten Zeroth Law of Operating System Design:
ONE DOES NOT QUESTION THE ASSERTION THAT TUX IS CUTE!
If assert(is_cute(TUX)&&tux_is(CUTE)) should fail, the machine is to be Drag(on I bag)ged to the top of a cliff and Drop(pings to stop)ped off to be judged by the Laws of Physics, which are Uniform and Fair for All. They may be a bastard, but their symmetries are known and tested well past the point of taking the piss. And by past the point of taking the piss, some guy called Tim ran so far out of ideas that he came up with the Web, through which flows over 99% of all the pr0n ever made, and still the Laws of Physics have not been broken.
Now how much of the US Constitution actually has a Quantum Mechanical Wave Function that is Well Defined? I will happily assert that if they remove the 'keep and arm bears' numptiness, then the remaining pattern space makes what remains a fixable problem.
US Law is Hereby Declared INCOMPATIBLE WITH KNOWN AND EMPIRICALLY VERIFIED PHYSICAL LAW. I mean, DONALD FUCKING TRUMP! What more proof does a sane human being need?
The Desktop is the ONE PLACE where Linux doesn't really belong. Linux has basically dominated everything else, even the local BIG SHINY FAN HEATER installed in this MET OFFICE building nearby. I have never seen it, but have TRUSTED FRIENDS WHO WORK THERE, and for me, ONCE FRIEND MEANS ALWAYS FRIEND.
SLASHDOT IS FRIEND.
ALL ELSE MAY BE BULL, BUT WhoTheHellCares!?
Begin #!barf
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An Oldskool kernel hacker once said: BEEN THERE, TRIED THAT, DIDN'T WORK, THREW IT IN THE BIN. /bin as where all the SORT OF WORKS programs go, to be marshalled by our friend the great GNU BASH.
Sometimes I see
The message above purporting to be from me IS GENUINE. The 'was I pwned' bit is a copy and paste of the first thing on my screen that is pissing me off. Slashdot is friend, and any slashdot user is friend of friend. Please do not abuse my trust, since I wish to teach the new school slashdotters about the old slashdot effect. We have a simple game to play:
MD5 is so broken it cannot hash the word BROKEN without getting PWND.
Now SHA256 is a 128bit hash with a 256bit output. That means it's QUANTUM MECHANICAL PHASE SPACE occupies at most 1/2**128 of its output space. This makes it an interesting test case.
The PASS THIS WORD HASHING GAME.
Write a letter. Split it into 128bit chunks. Pass each chunk though SHA256. Split the output into 64bit chunks (exercise: can you count how any chunks that is? If not then perhaps you should put down the beer and go to bed.)
Take the SHA256 outputs from above, base64 them. Split into 128bit (char x[16]) chunks. Go to random web pages and sign up as new user, and use these outputs as passwords, and fragments of the message as entries to other boxes.
How long before the weight of humanity saturates the 128bit QUANTUM SEARCH SPACE? (The Quantum Search Space is the inverse image of the word Alive under the mapping X -> { Dead, Alive } for those who grok maths.)
John The#MooStyleMaster (Cult of the New Age Bull on Youtube).
John_Chalisque
that linux is still an unrefined, fragmented mess that has not got the professional, polished software support the others got ( niche cases aside - e.g. to take the most prominent example: gimp and the likes are a far cry from photoshop). if you change that, you give up everything that makes linux linux - and then you get osx. itâs just never going to happen.
The Year of Linux on the Desktop, will be when VM software is advanced enough to allow seamless use of ALL of the computers hardware (yes, I'm including full graphics card capabilities here...) - even to the most idiotic and non-technical end-user - for a Windows install in a VM, and with no performance loss whatsoever. That's when you'll see 'The Year of Linux on the Desktop' - when it can seamlessly co-exist with Windows, with ZERO drawbacks, and ZERO hitches/catches.
It's when you made modification of Qt source code, then you need to provide the modification source (not the whole application).
you can walk into any PC store and buy a Linux desktop or laptop (buying online isn't enough) Hardware (wifi dongles, printers, scanners, etc) needs to come pre-supporting Linux and not spends hours trawling forums for advice. Also upgrading the distro shouldn't lose hardware support (happens a lot with WiFi cards and dongles) Microsoft Office needs to work on Linux (yes LibreOffice can do lots of things but it isn't up to the standard of MS, spreadsheet tables and charts are old fashioned looking, pivot tables aren't up to scratch). Expecting lits of fanboi rants but these are the things we need to make Linux popular to the ordinary family. If you are a student and using MSO in class switching to LO at home isn't feasible, the same if you are working on a project at work and need to carry on working at home, LO isn't going to cut it. At one stage I think LO and OpenOffice were close in functionality to MSO but they lost out, I dunno if they can catch up now. Most other apps are good enough
I installed Win 8.1 and the HDD caught fire and the mouse exploded. True story. Listen, muppet, nobody believes your twaddle unless they wanted already to believe it because it's easier to not move and they still want to feel "right" about not bothering. Or anti-FOSS trolls butthurt that FOSS is even a thing, the commie bastards.
Linux will never gain appreciable market share until the command line is dead. That means full adoption and support of proprietary GPU drivers, finally getting rid of X.Org, and agreeing upon a single API for the GUI so that KDE, Gnome, and every other window manager works with the same universal app package. The reason that all of those things requires the death of the command line is that all of those things break too easily in current distros and forcing novice users to use a command line turns them off of the operating system and sends them back to far superior systems like Windows 10, Mac OS X, and ChromeOS.